An alumna of Clarion West Writer’s Workshop for science fiction and fantasy, I’ve written for markets like The New York Times and Time Out New York. Currently, I write about sci-fi for Blastr. I also edit the humor competition for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and here at Forbes.

Sexual Harassment in Videogame Culture

There’s so much to learn about harassment in video game culture–not only in-game but also AFK–that it’s been very difficult to encapsulate in one article. So I’m breaking it into two parts. Part one, below, describes the problem of sexism in this not-so-niche geek culture and includes interviews from both female and male gamers. Part two discusses potential solutions.

WARNING: FOUL LANGUAGE

Shavaun Scott was stalked not once but twice by fellow gamers during her time in Lineage II. As an elf healer named Evanor, she offered her services to a knight and an orc at different times. She said, “They believed we were actually having a relationship. In both cases they’d get really angry if I played with other people instead of them. One called me a whore, or called Evanor a whore.”

Scott isn’t just a gamer. She’s also a psychologist and the co-author of Game Addiction: The Experience and the Effects. So she is able to describe her experience as both a gamer and a professional psychotherapist: “It was interesting how I actually felt frightened, even though I knew the guy lived a couple of hundred miles away…it was the dynamic of the relationship he was trying to create.”

According to vs247, there are 39 million active MMO gamers in the United States. Although many gamers play to immerse themselves in a different world, the most cited reason people play MMOs is to socialize with friends and potential friends. An estimated 40% of MMO videogamers are female (that number increases to 47% when you account for all videogames), and as some of them can tell you, these social interactions occasionally have negative consequences.

Online games have introduced single people to their future spouses and future careers, as well as have literally and figuratively saved people’s lives. Best of all, MMO games, and online gaming in general, are a terrific way to meet fabulous people and kill them.

But a small percentage of players–I have no statistics, but most of the people I interviewed believe that sexual harassment comes from a vocal few–have made online gaming a difficult and unpleasant experience for female gamers.

Let’s backtrack. Once upon a time, the world of videogames was clearly a male-dominated one. That overly hormonal male college student or the teenage boy in his mother’s basement? Those were in fact the majority of gamers…over twenty years ago. To cater to this audience, videogame companies added sexualizedfemale characters. Scantily clad female characters were the norm–both in game and in real life, as seen by the “booth babes” hired for conventions to entice male gamers to their gaming booths.

Now that MMOs are peopled by women and men in relationships, the single male gamer is still the majority, but less than you might think, and Valve has proven that non-sexual female action heroes can star in award-winning and lucrative games. (Thanks, Portal!)

Still, many games companies have lagged behind the times (see Lollipop Chainsaw as an example of a sexualized female character). So have gamers, who believe that saying “Get out of the game and make me a sandwich” is an appropriate response to encountering a female player. In 2012.

Sadly, some female gamers have come to grudgingly accept this as par for the digital course.

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Forbes, get rid of this waste of space of a writer. She is agenda driven and nothing more. Look at the comment section, and then which comment she chose to call out. The idea behind called out comments is to pick comments that further the discussion, not to cherry pick only comments that support the author or the author’s perspective. No wonder she is such a a big supporter of Sarkeesian. When it comes to people destroying their arguments they react exactly the same.

Banning culprits is not only impractical but it fails to solve the underlying problem. The problem is that it’s socially acceptable to do things in online gaming that it wouldn’t be anywhere else. I’d like to point out that its a bannable offense on most message boards to even post the Online name of people who are doing BS things in game. The trolls have won right there, social accountability is what you should be working towards. Once people even if its just with their online identity get called out they will wither under the light of scrutiny and become marginalized

I think a lot of people are missing the fact that harassment, whether aimed at women, men, gay, lesbian, child, elder, etc, is still harassment. It’s used to bring someone else down. Sure, in a game, we taunt each other to get a rise out of it. But when it becomes uncomfortable people stop playing.

As a female player I can take a lot of heat. I work in an environment full of men and always have. I’ve been an auto mechanic, a bartender, and a kitchen manager. Let me remind you that in all three professions, the majority is men. Coming in as a woman, it leaves me subject to a lot of harassment. I can take it “like a guy” when someone calls me a bitch, cunt, whatever. But it’s that moment when you’ve already told someone to stop and it keeps going. It keeps happening.

Yeah, a lot of people just “accept” the harassment as par for the course when gaming. But there comes a point when someone says “stop” that it needs to stop. I don’t always agree that women are harassed all the time. No, we all know that in MMOs, real female players (and some male players playing as females) enjoy extra perks just for having an avatar with breasts. Extra gear, free items, extra help on quests when you don’t really need it. You know what I’ve done with these? Said a polite thank you.

I tend to write in circles when I’m worked up about something. The point I’m trying to make is that harassment is not taunting an opponent in-game/IRL, it’s not telling the elf player in a skimpy outfit that she’s hot. HARASSMENT IS ANY COMMENT, SITUATION OR ACTION THAT MAKES ANOTHER PERSON FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE OR UNSAFE.

If you have a girlfriend/wife/daughter/sister, would you want someone to treat her that way? How about your brother/son/husband/boyfriend? Would you be okay with someone saying they’re going to “f***ing tear your a** apart” or “shoot you in your f***ing “? Don’t forget that players come in all ages, genders, shapes and sizes. Just because the gaming world has been male dominated for years doesn’t make it the norm these days. The world is changing and what people need to get over is the fact that it will change and they can’t stop it.

Also, harassment/bullying is a lead cause of youth suicide. With the power of the digital world, no one can escape bullying. When you have felt the fear and self loathing that comes with being bullied, when you’re hiding in your room, afraid to go outside or talk to anyone or even log on the internet because of what people will say to you, then come on here and make your bigoted comments about people “getting over it.” Will you still be so proud of yourself when that 12-year-old kid you called a “pussy” and a “n00b fag” is found dead because of suicide? Where’s your pride then?

Thanks for referencing Destructoid in your article. I’m the publisher and founder. One correction for your article: We reached 3 million visitors last month. I’m not sure where you pulled 300k from, as we’d be out of business if that was true.

On the subject of rape, try Googling “site:destructoid.com rape” and you’ll find we’ve editorialized many newsworthy stories of rape-related quotes in video games and others on the psychology of gamers. While I’m sure there’s some ugly comments here and there you can zero in on in our forums, this is hardly the majority case. When it harassment (and it does happen) have great community managers and a support email line to ban and block abusive users.

Ok…. so while I agree with the vast majority of your points, and indeed frequently feel uncomfortable and occasionally ashamed by the portrayal of women in games, I take a certain amount of umbrage with the comment on page 4 about the mentally ill.

Frankly, the assertion is bad reasoning and rather offensive. To elaborate, the statement that “We also need to remember that there are a substantial number of people with various forms of mental illness who are very active online” is in no way established by a statistic on the prevalence of mental illness. 1 in 4 people may experience a mental illness in their life, but it does not automatically follow that a substantial number of them are “very active” online just because someone says it does. Moreover, this quote being used as an explanation for the harassment of women online plays into the outdated stereotype that all people with mental illness are a danger or menace to society, incapable of playing by the rules of “normal” people.

Mental illness encompasses a huge variety of conditions, from those that might cause someone to behave in an entirely inappropriate manner to anxiety and depression. Working on an acute mental health ward at the moment, I can tell you that even those who are very ill with psychotic type symptoms are suffering from diseases that affect them far more than anyone else. The best you can possibly argue is that SOME people have mental illnesses, SOME of which MIGHT manifest as antisocial behaviour, SOME of these people spend time online and SOME of these display this antisocial behaviour online, for “SOME” substituting an entirely unknown (and diminishing) fraction. I’m probably overreacting, but such comments are not suitable in an article such as this – reasoning essentially using a foundation of “nutters are dangerous” is no better than men assuming that a woman at a games show doesn’t understand basic computer mechanics based on an assumption that it’s “guys’ stuff”.